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Duo:

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

—Oscar Wilde

I almost don’t know what to do with myself. It is 6:21 pm; this entry is due in thirty-eight minutes. To quote Michael J. Fox’s character, Lewis Rothschild, in the 1995 film, The American President, “I thought we were going to be rushed.” Thirty minutes is plenty to pump out 500-1000 words. Um…yeah.

I want use this thirty minutes to do two things. I want to talk a bit about the main character in my stories, Simple Man and I want to chat a bit about my latest obsession. I like to think of myself as a writing purest, so blogging (ack) is almost dirty, but I will say that free writing (I hate the word blog, so I am substituting) does have some merit. I know that Vonnegut just rolled in his grave, but he will get over it, and so should I. It is nice to be able to meander through my thoughts, pick out a chunk of knowledge, and give it voice. I guess that is, knowledge meandering I mean, my point to this work, if you, dear reader, will call it that. I get to choose what to write, how to write it and when. For today we have simple man and 2048.

Simple Man is mostly a figment of my imagination. He looks a lot like me when I was 24. Young, fresh eyes, uncreased brow and his future ahead of him. He wants to go outside and play, but in an aimless sort of way that makes believe that he is simple of thought, although he is not. He was raised in a family, but only in the most lenient definition of the term. His father dies very early. His mother also dies, but later. In the interim, she marries the a-typical alcoholic asshole. There are adventures, but SM escapes to the Army, where he is not a grunt and his mind starts to show itself. After multiple tours in the new Iraq, he leaves the Army and puts himself through college. Along the way he is married and divorced, married and divorced and married again. He works, but is always dreaming of the other side of the fence.

In many ways, I am Simple Man, but in many ways, I am not. Simple Man is a work of my imagination. The best and worst of it. He dies, he lives. He fucks and he is without. He is, simply, whatever I want him to be. By the way, I do know what his favorite car is: the 1969 and a half Ford Fairlane Fast back. Canary fucking Yellow. Ford’s famous small block 351 under the hood. The Fairlane was not offered as a fast back in ’69, but the design for the 1970 was not produced in time, so Ford offered a limited production run of the fast back as a half year model. I had a friend in high school with one, and the car has entranced me, I mean Simple Man, ever since. I love that car.

So this is where I am going to leave SM for now. He will return, both in this work and in the stories that spill from my mental gullet.

I know that in the beginning of this post, I said that I was going to talk about 2048, the online game that the Huffington Post proclaimed to be the next Flappy Birds. I really wanted to spend some time on this today, but alas, I got the word count that I needed from Simple Man. Plus, it is now 6:47, class starts in 13 minutes, and I still need to print this. So I will save this deceptively simple and intriguing game for the next time.